There’s been a lot of discussion over the last few days, focused of course on last Friday’s CES announcements.
My personal take on the matter is that the Google Pack will be quite useful to a great many people. The ability to have the computer keep itself up-to-date is long overdue. Microsoft’s Automatic Updates for Windows take a good stab at this, as does Apple’s Software Update for OS X. Now is the time for the same procedures to be available to applications. This requires tools:
- Either one tool per software developer
- Or one tool from the OS developer for applications on their platform
- Or one third party tool which could be cross platform[1], and integrate with cross platform applications to keep them updated
I prefer the last option and it grants more power to the end user. They can switch operating systems and still have familiar applications and methods of keeping them updated.
[1] I don’t know if Google is planning anything like this, so please don’t read anything in to it 🙂